The Web Standards Project announce they are taking a break… old news perhaps but it happened to coincide with my going to a UltraDev meet to talk about the future, about standards, XHTML and CSS… about the things that in part I have learned from The Web Standards Project.
6 months ago I built and was getting a load of hassle about this site which still throws out users who visit with browsers that do not have decent support for web standards. Perhaps I wouldn’t have had the nerve to do this had I not had the backing of that well written page on the Web Standards Project site.
I’ve learned a lot since I built this site, I’ve started to use fully CSS positioned HTML and XHTML compliant sites for clients, I’ve found ways to cope with old browsers other than simply throwing them out. I’ve learned a new way of working well enough to be able to talk about it to others, to hopefully get other people as excited about the new possibilities as I still am.
I’m sad that the Web Standards project felt the need to take a break. I’m sad because they gave me a kick in the right direction, and I’m sure countless other developers could say the same. The Web Standards Project was a starting point and a home, somewhere to go back to and point other people to.
Times are changing – the reception I got for these ideas this last weekend was positive and interested and full of questions. Things are moving on, but I don’t think its time to stop pushing, and it can get rather lonely when it feels like you are flying this bloody big flag that you don’t fully understand all on your own …